California Doctor's Suicide Leaves Many Troubling Mysteries Unsolved

By JO THOMAS

Published: November 3, 2002

IRVINE, Calif.—
On the morning of Feb. 28, 2000, a man in a black hood ran up to Patrick Riley in front of his office, shot him flush in the face and fled.

The bullet missed his brain, and Mr. Riley, a biotechnology entrepreneur, survived. But two days later, his business partner, a doctor named Larry C. Ford, killed himself with a shotgun after learning he was suspected of being the mastermind behind the shooting.

That is where the story probably would have ended -- a lurid but ultimately local piece of intrigue played out in the sun-splashed Orange County sprawl -- had it not been for the phone calls that within hours began coming in to the police. Dr. Ford, the callers said, had left something behind: a cache of weapons and anthrax.

The local elementary school was closed. Forty-two families were evacuated from their homes in Dr. Ford's affluent neighborhood. Then police and federal investigators began to unearth evidence that Larry Ford had another life -- that he was not just a brilliant, if somewhat geeky, gynecologist who hoped to develop a device to protect women from AIDS.

Buried next to his swimming pool they found canisters containing machine guns and C-4 plastic explosives. In refrigerators at his home and office, next to the salad dressing and employee lunches, were 266 bottles and vials of pathogens -- among them salmonella, cholera, botulism and typhoid. The deadly poison ricin was stored, with a blowgun and darts, in a plastic bag in the family room. A compartment under the floorboards held medical files on 83 women.

What the searchers did not find was anthrax, and the fear of what remained unfound, along with dozens of other questions, set off investigations that ranged from Beverly Hills to South Africa and back to the Nevada desert.

Since then, pieces of Dr. Ford's other life have begun to emerge. Taken together, they form a troubling and confusing picture -- of a man with ties to racist, antigovernment groups in the United States who also developed a relationship with apartheid South Africa's secret biological and chemical weapons program, Project Coast.

For the most part, though, investigators say they are stymied, a long way from understanding what Dr. Ford was doing with his guns and his germs. In South Africa, documents from Project Coast were either destroyed or classified and put on CD-ROM's in a military vault. The fragments of Larry Ford's other life remain just that -- frightening, tantalizing fragments.

Still, while no one is suggesting any link to the anthrax attacks of last fall, the questions Dr. Ford left behind nag deeper now, in the ambient anxiety of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Around Irvine, most people knew the 49-year-old Dr. Ford as a committed Mormon and a family man of harmless eccentricities, like wearing tennis shoes no matter what the occasion.

Trained as a gynecologist and microbiologist, he taught at the University of California at Los Angeles in the 1980's and later at the university's campus here. He wrote dozens of scholarly articles on infectious diseases and, with Mr. Riley, ran a biotechnology company, Biofem Inc.

After his suicide, officials began to wonder if Dr. Ford might have deliberately infected some patients. There were the hidden medical records, and a number of women had come forward to say they feared Dr. Ford was responsible for their mysterious illnesses. But in interviews, several former patients praised Dr. Ford and said they felt fine.

Epidemiologists examined the records and interviewed eight women, six of them ill. But they quickly closed the inquiry, saying they had found no public health threat and no pattern of symptoms suggesting deliberate infection.

One of the women, Shane Gregory, says she was a 27-year-old U.C.L.A. undergraduate when Dr. Ford became infatuated with her in 1981, buying her a car and renting her an apartment. She says she broke off the relationship in 1984 -- and believes that was the same year Dr. Ford deliberately infected her, possibly in Los Angeles and possibly in London.

In October 1987, she says, she developed vertigo, and ''that's when my life changed.'' Despite brain surgery and medicine, she says, ''I never got better.''

According to a law enforcement official, Dr. Ford told two friends that he had infected Ms. Gregory with an ''alpha toxin.'' The official said the authorities had recently received information that appeared to corroborate this.

Then there were the suggestions that Dr. Ford was working for the C.I.A. Several people close to him -- including Dr. Hunter Hammill, a Baylor University professor who collaborated on papers with him -- say he sometimes told them so. Other people say they simply assumed it.

''We had heard that he had worked for the government, worked at Fort Detrick,'' said Dr. Daniel Knobel, a senior official in Project Coast. He was referring to the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Md., where the government did biological weapons research.

Lt. Col. Kathleen W. Carr, the institute's deputy commander for operations, said there was no record of Dr. Ford's having worked there. In addition, a scientist who was a leading C.I.A. expert on biological warfare during this time said he had never heard of him.

Indeed, Dr. Ford's only known connection to Fort Detrick is an unclassified 1988 newcomer's guide found among his belongings.